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Wednesday, March 21, 2012

Final Fantasy IV

Final Fantasy VIII on the SNES.

Final Fantasy IV, originally known as Final Fantasy II on the SNES, is considered one of the greatest games of all time. It's not. In fact, it's one of the cheesiest, most cliché-ridden, and downright stupidest games of all time. That said, it does have a lot of what makes Final Fantasy great. Well, it has a lot of what MADE Final Fantasy great before Square Enix shat all over it.

This is Final Fantasy, so we're looking for an epic story, and good gameplay can't make a game in this series alone. So, that said, why does Final Fantasy IV suck (well, more so overrated than suck)? Well, it starts off awesome in Mysidia with Cecil kicking ass and taking names, but then he goes all sentimental on our asses and questions the king. So he gets stripped of rank and is told to go with Kain to deliver a package to Mist. Too stupid to realize that the king is planning something nefarious, he goes to the village and the package kills everyone there except for a little girl, who you instinctively know is going to join your party.

That's Rydia's concept art? wtf gross

So they find out that Rosa followed Cecil and is sick, then they meet Tellah, who joins them through unspoken consent. They go to Damascus, which gets bombed like NATO is about to do their asses in real life. Anna, daughter of Tellah and lover of Prince Edward of Damascus, gets smoked by one of the airships. Edward joins the party to help them cure Rosa and get revenge on Golbez, while Tellah leaves the party to get revenge on Golbez (?). Which means you lose a powerful wizard for a pansy-ass flute-tooter with a feather in his hat. Thanks for being a team player Tellah. They cure Rosa (surprise) and go to another city to protect the next crystal that Golbez is after.

They meet Master Yang, and the Red Wings attack with Kain under Golbez's control. Kain kicks Cecil's pussy ass, and Rosa gets kidnapped (obviously). Yang joins through unspoken consent, and the party leaves by boat. They're attacked by Leviathan and everyone is scattered, with Yang later saying that Rydia got swallowed by Leviathan. Cecil finds himself in Mysidia, where he's shocked to see how much the mages hate him (really?) and decides to become a Paladin. Two annoying mages accompany him, he becomes a Paladin, and Tellah arrives to learn Meteor. Cid comes and they fly away before getting killed, and the annoying mages thankfully sacrifice themselves to save the important characters.

Much better.

Kain dragoon jumps onto the ship and demands a crystal in exchange for Rosa. They go to the tower (surprise) in which she's held and Golbez takes the crystal, though Tellah sacrifices himself by using meteor to injure Golbez and release Kain from his mind control. It's ok though, because through the Force, Tellah becomes more powerful than anyone could imagine and helps them win the final battle. They rescue Rosa (surprise) and get the fuck outta there. Then the shit hits the fan. Suddenly, it's revealed that Golbez needs underground crystals to go to the moon (the fuck?) and they find him underground fighting dwarves (seriously, where did this shit come from?) and he wins, though his army is defeated thanks to Rydia, who is now a grown woman. Who woulda thought being shat out by Leviathan would have such healthy consequences?

Then Golbez gets the last crystal by controlling Kain again (who he has actually had control of all along, go figure), and it ends up that there's been a ship all along that can take them to the moon so everything ends up ok as they board the ship called the Lunar Whale (lmao). It ends up that Cecil is half moon-man, Golbez is his brother under mind control of the moon-man leader, and that the moon-man leader, Zeromus, wants to eradicate earth's living creatures for the sake of all moon-kind. After hours of power-leveling, you might beat the game, otherwise you'll get tired and never see the shitty ending, in which nothing happens anyway. Seriously, the game is so laughably easy until you get to the moon, and then suddenly you'll need to train about 40 levels to even have a shot against Zeromus. Wtf is up with that? Oh, and the annoying mages get revived (bullshit).

I almost agree. The plot is silly, but a lot of RPG plots are. My problem with this game is the gameplay. Because you switch characters all the time, and only get the final 5 2/3 of the way through the game, you spend a lot of time grinding character who in the end don't matter. Further, there is little to no customization. Most battles can be auto-run, but they still take too long. At least in FF3 or FF5 the auto battles can be fun because you've built your team just so. But being forced to use their builds makes the whole thing boring. I've tried playing it 3 or 4 times now, once in the early 90s on an SNES, once in the late 90s on an emu, once in the 2000s on a DS, and once again just now on iOS. I've loved all the other FFs (except the craptacularly broken 2) so I keep wanting to give it a shot. It simply doesn't deserve the grind. 2 out of 5 Mehs!

Wait, you've got it all wrong. Not "a lot of RPG plots are." More like, "a lot of the popular RPG plots are." Some of the more obscure RPGs actually have pretty solid plots. Persona is good for a good anime-esque plot, Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky has a pretty solid plot, even if the first three games in the series to be released in America were pure garbage ---

Basically...

Vermillion Halo, Prophecy of the Moonlight Witch and Song of the Ocean, the first three Legend of Heroes games released in America, known as a collective as the sub-series "Gagharv Trilogy," is no doubt the worst of the series and some of the wort RPG's of all. Trails in the Sky is amazing though, a huge improvement ,and Trails of Cold Steel is just a little less good than TiTS. This is Legend of Heroes, a spin off series of the action RPG series Dragon Slayer.

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Radiant Historia's nonlinear plot is good and melded well with some other aspects of its gameplay (though it could be better and the characters could be better), The World Ends With You's is pretty good, though the character development is probably the best part of TWEWY(the gameplay is fun but gets old after a while)... and many others.

Many of the RPG's, like Persona, Trails in the Sky and The World Ends With You, are really more enjoyable if you're accustomed to anime-esque storytelling and dialogue (with melodramatic responses to things, especially in TWEWY and whatnot. Their plots especially reek of "being told like an anime" and TWEWY's especially feels like an anime-fantasy story. That isn't to say they're cliche, but the way they play out are just really anime-esque. Which isn't bad when you're used to it, since they're still well told stories.)

But still, stories are an important part of the RPG genre, almost as much as the gameplay is. At least, I feel like story is important to an RPG.